Nathan Cullen, NDP finance critic and MP for Skeena — Bulkley Valley, in an interview on January 14, 2015

Nathan Cullen said that since 2004, 400,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in Canada, 50,000 of those in the automotive sector. This is true, and part of a trend that is not confined to Canada.

FactsCan Score: True

In a CBC segment, MPs debated whether falling oil prices would require the government to adjust its economic forecast and abandon some promises, such as income splitting, that relied on a surplus.

During this debate, Nathan Cullen, an NDP MP, said “400,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada since 2004 … 50,000 just in the auto sector alone.” Whatever the point he was making regarding a new economic forecast, we’ll only check the number of jobs that have been lost.

Statistics Canada data that is seasonally adjusted, or controlled for regular starts and stops in seasonal work, show that since 2004, about 559,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada. For the same period, the same data – but unadjusted for seasonal variance – show about 48,000 jobs lost in automotive manufacturing (including parts and vehicle body manufacturing). Another StatsCan data source, tracking numbers for “total automotive industries” from 2004 to 2012 shows a loss of just over 51,000 jobs.

Further, a yearly report from StatsCan states: “The decline in 2013 was the latest in a series of decreases since the turn of the millennium. The manufacturing sector lost over 500,000 jobs in the nine-year period from 2001 to 2010. The only two years seeing gains were 2011 and 2012, which brought some mild relief with an uptick of 29,100 jobs. However, the gains were not nearly enough to bring employment back to its pre-recession level.”

Why were these jobs lost? StatsCan points to a range of factors, a big one being the economic downturn that saw manufacturing shed jobs across North America.

According to government data, Cullen’s claim is true. Since 2004, 400,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada, 50,000 in the auto sector.